Embrace Home Loans Maintains Compliance with RATA Comply Suite

LONGWOOD, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--RATA Associates, an industry-leading provider of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) data compliance software and services for financial institutions, announced that Newport, R.I.-based Embrace Home Loans continues to remain compliant with its RATA Comply Suite, GeoPlus Geocoding Service and Comply Peer-2-Peer. Embrace Home Loans is a prominent leader in the mortgage industry and a direct lender for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, approved by FHA and VA, and an issuer for Ginnie Mae.

“Maintaining compliance is critical and often a stressful and burdensome process. With RATA’s Comply Suite, this process is much less stressful and we’re always confident the results will be accurate. Furthermore, the RATA team is highly experienced, friendly and easy to work with.”

For more than 23 years, RATA has pioneered HMDA/CRA compliance software and is recognized among all regulatory agencies as an experienced and professional service bureau. Investing nearly $3.5 million in its compliance software suite over the last four years, RATA’s Comply Suite is built on the latest Microsoft .NET and SQL Server technology platforms.

“We’ve been using RATA’s software and services for nearly 12 years and couldn’t be more pleased,” said Peter Microulis, vice president of quality assurance for Embrace Home Loans. “Maintaining compliance is critical and often a stressful and burdensome process. With RATA’s Comply Suite, this process is much less stressful and we’re always confident the results will be accurate. Furthermore, the RATA team is highly experienced, friendly and easy to work with.”

With RATA’s GeoPlus Geocoding Service, Embrace Home Loans was able to efficiently and accurately process more than 300,000 applications last year. Most companies that attempt to geocode their data internally use only one address-matching engine, and few companies are able to sustain a staff experienced in executing the process. RATA uses seven proprietary and commercially available address-matching engines, organized in a 13-step process that maximizes the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of each matching engine. Additionally, RATA’s team boasts more than 65 years of collective geocoding experience and has geocoded more than 35 million addresses in the last five years.

Microulis said, “For a lender to engage the equipment, software, personnel and other resources necessary to self monitor this data would require an extraordinary expenditure of time and funds, not to mention the necessity to make sure that the data is 100 percent accurate. RATA has proven that it provides accurate data at a lower cost than would otherwise be required, and thereby allows a lender to focus its attention on its internal procedural factors.”

RATA’s Comply Peer-2-Peer is a Web-based tool designed to help institutions gauge how they compare and rank with their peers. Built on the same .NET technology platform as the RATA Comply Suite, Comply Peer-2-Peer offers institutions the power and flexibility needed to analyze the much anticipated and publicized pricing data as well as other prohibited-basis information to determine if disparities are present.

According to John A. Woloshen, executive vice president and chief operating officer for RATA, “Negotiating the complex world of reporting requirements is a challenge for lenders, but RATA’s DOS and newer Comply Suite solutions have helped hundreds of financial institutions and lenders like Embrace Home Loans submit HMDA/CRA data accurately and efficiently. We place the utmost importance on customer service and client satisfaction, offering exceptional hands-on support. In the past five years since the Comply Suite was first released in 2004, we have gained many new clients and have not lost a single client to a competitor. All of our clients have submitted 100 percent accurate data for the last five consecutive years, validating our excellent new technology. Further, from 1990 to 2004, all RATA clients submitted 100 percent accurate data using our older and now discontinued DOS based software.”

About RATA Associates

Founded in 1987 by John R. Woloshen, RATA’s current CEO, RATA Associates is an industry-leading provider of data compliance software and services for financial institutions. Built on .NET technology, RATA’s Comply Suite software is the industry’s most modern software and geocoding solution, enabling financial institutions to remain compliant with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and Fair Lending Act efficiently and economically. Since 1990, RATA has helped more than 600 financial institution clients successfully submit HMDA/CRA data each year. For more information, please visit www.rataassociates.com.